![White Sea map](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b3/White_Sea_map.png)
The Solovki special camp (later the Solovki special prison), was set up in 1923 on the
Solovetsky Islands
The Solovetsky Islands (russian: Солове́цкие острова́), or Solovki (), are an archipelago located in the Onega Bay of the White Sea, Russia. As an administrative division, the islands are incorporated as Solovetsky District of ...
in the
White Sea
The White Sea (russian: Белое море, ''Béloye móre''; Karelian and fi, Vienanmeri, lit. Dvina Sea; yrk, Сэрако ямʼ, ''Serako yam'') is a southern inlet of the Barents Sea located on the northwest coast of Russia. It is su ...
as a remote and inaccessible place of detention, primarily intended for socialist opponents of Soviet Russia's new
Bolshevik
The Bolsheviks (russian: Большевики́, from большинство́ ''bol'shinstvó'', 'majority'),; derived from ''bol'shinstvó'' (большинство́), "majority", literally meaning "one of the majority". also known in English ...
regime. The first book on the
Gulag
The Gulag, an acronym for , , "chief administration of the camps". The original name given to the system of camps controlled by the GPU was the Main Administration of Corrective Labor Camps (, )., name=, group= was the government agency in ...
, namely, ''
In the Claws of the GPU'' (1934) by
Francišak Aljachnovič, described the Solovki prison camp.
At first, the
Anarchists
Anarchism is a political philosophy and movement that is skeptical of all justifications for authority and seeks to abolish the institutions it claims maintain unnecessary coercion and hierarchy, typically including, though not necessari ...
,
Mensheviks
The Mensheviks (russian: меньшевики́, from меньшинство 'minority') were one of the three dominant factions in the Russian socialist movement, the others being the Bolsheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries.
The factions eme ...
and
Socialist Revolutionaries
The Socialist Revolutionary Party, or the Party of Socialist-Revolutionaries (the SRs, , or Esers, russian: эсеры, translit=esery, label=none; russian: Партия социалистов-революционеров, ), was a major politi ...
enjoyed a special status there and were not made to work. Gradually, prisoners from the old regime (priests, gentry, and White Army officers) joined them and the guards and the ordinary criminals worked together to keep the "politicals" in order.
This was the nucleus from which the entire Gulag grew, thanks to its proximity to the first great construction project of the Five-Year Plans, the
White Sea–Baltic Canal
The White Sea–Baltic Canal (russian: Беломо́рско-Балти́йский кана́л, , ), often abbreviated to White Sea Canal () is a ship canal in Russia opened on 2 August 1933. It connects the White Sea, in the Arctic Ocean, with ...
.
In one way, Solovki and the White Sea Canal broke a basic rule of the Gulag: they were both far too close to the border. This facilitated a number of daring escapes in the 1920s;
as war loomed in the late 1930s it led to the closure of the Solovki special prison. Its several thousand inmates were transferred elsewhere, or
shot on the mainland and on Solovki.
The "mother of the Gulag"
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn. (11 December 1918 – 3 August 2008) was a Russian novelist. One of the most famous Soviet dissidents, Solzhenitsyn was an outspoken critic of communism and helped to raise global awareness of political repress ...
called Solovki the "mother of the
GULAG
The Gulag, an acronym for , , "chief administration of the camps". The original name given to the system of camps controlled by the GPU was the Main Administration of Corrective Labor Camps (, )., name=, group= was the government agency in ...
".
From monastery to concentration camp
Historically, the Solovetsky Islands were the location of the famous
Russian Orthodox
Russian Orthodoxy (russian: Русское православие) is the body of several churches within the larger communion of Eastern Orthodox Christianity, whose liturgy is or was traditionally conducted in Church Slavonic language. Most ...
Solovetsky Monastery
The Solovetsky Monastery ( rus, Солове́цкий монасты́рь, p=səlɐˈvʲɛtskʲɪj mənɐˈstɨrʲ) is a fortified monastery located on the Solovetsky Islands in the White Sea in northern Russia. It was one of the largest Chris ...
complex. It was a centre of economic activity with over three hundred monks, and also a forepost of Russian naval power in the North, repelling foreign attacks during the
Time of Troubles
The Time of Troubles (russian: Смутное время, ), or Smuta (russian: Смута), was a period of political crisis during the Tsardom of Russia which began in 1598 with the death of Fyodor I (Fyodor Ivanovich, the last of the Rurik dy ...
, the
Crimean War
The Crimean War, , was fought from October 1853 to February 1856 between Russia and an ultimately victorious alliance of the Ottoman Empire, France, the United Kingdom and Piedmont-Sardinia.
Geopolitical causes of the war included the de ...
, and the
Russian Civil War
, date = October Revolution, 7 November 1917 – Yakut revolt, 16 June 1923{{Efn, The main phase ended on 25 October 1922. Revolt against the Bolsheviks continued Basmachi movement, in Central Asia and Tungus Republic, the Far East th ...
. In the autumn of 1922 the process of transitioning from a monastery to concentration camp began.
All wooden buildings were burned, and many of the monks were murdered, including the
Igumen
Hegumen, hegumenos, or igumen ( el, ἡγούμενος, trans. ), is the title for the head of a monastery in the Eastern Orthodox and Eastern Catholic Churches, similar to the title of abbot. The head of a convent of nuns is called a hegumenia ...
. The remaining monks were sent to forced labour camps in central Russia.
The unpublished decree of 3 November 1923 led to the conversion of the monastery buildings into the Solovki "special" camp: the Solovetsky Lager Osobogo Naznachenia or ''SLON'' in Russian (the
acronym
An acronym is a word or name formed from the initial components of a longer name or phrase. Acronyms are usually formed from the initial letters of words, as in ''NATO'' (''North Atlantic Treaty Organization''), but sometimes use syllables, as ...
is a play on the Russian word for elephant). One of the first "forced
labor camp
A labor camp (or labour camp, see spelling differences) or work camp is a detention facility where inmates are forced to engage in penal labor as a form of punishment. Labor camps have many common aspects with slavery and with prisons (especi ...
s", Solovki served as a prototype for the
Gulag
The Gulag, an acronym for , , "chief administration of the camps". The original name given to the system of camps controlled by the GPU was the Main Administration of Corrective Labor Camps (, )., name=, group= was the government agency in ...
as a whole. In early 1924, it was sometimes given a double name, ''Severnye (Solovetskiye) Lagerya OGPU'' (Northern (Solovki) camps of
OGPU
The Joint State Political Directorate (OGPU; russian: Объединённое государственное политическое управление) was the intelligence and state security service and secret police of the Soviet Union f ...
).
Its remote situation made escape almost impossible and in Tsarist times the monastery had been used, on occasion, as a political prison by the
Russian imperial administration. The treatment of the prisoners in the Soviet-era camp attracted much criticism in Western Europe and the United States after a book came out in England, ''An Island Hell'', by S. A. Malsagoff. This book appeared soon after a Solovki prisoner, who secretly knew how to speak English, managed to escape from Kem on an English freight vessel. After a thorough clean-up, the Soviet government sent the proletarian writer
Maxim Gorky
Alexei Maximovich Peshkov (russian: link=no, Алексе́й Макси́мович Пешко́в; – 18 June 1936), popularly known as Maxim Gorky (russian: Макси́м Го́рький, link=no), was a Russian writer and social ...
there in an attempt to counter this negative publicity. He wrote a very favourable essay, which praised the beauty of nature on the islands, but some authors believe he understood the real conditions he was witnessing.
[ See pp. 242–243.][ See p.188.]
The Baltic-White Sea Canal
The exact number of prisoners sent to Solovki from 1923 to the closure of its penitentiary facilities in 1939 is unknown. Estimates range between tens and hundreds of thousands.
In 1923, Soloviki contained "no more than 3,000" prisoners; by 1930, the number had jumped to "about 50,000", with another 30,000 held on the mainland at the nearest railhead of
Kem. In the early 1930s, many of the prisoners from the camp worked on the notorious
White Sea – Baltic Canal
White is the lightest color and is achromatic (having no hue). It is the color of objects such as snow, chalk, and milk, and is the opposite of black. White objects fully reflect and scatter all the visible wavelengths of light. White on ...
,
one of a succession of grandiose schemes devised by Stalin.
A Special Prison, 1936-1939
In 1936, the Solovki camp was renamed a "special" prison (STON, an acronym that reads "Groan" in Russian) and from then until its closure in 1939 it served as a holding area for many prisoners subsequently executed, there or on the mainland, during the Great Terror of 1937–1938.
Until documents confirming their execution were found in 1996, it was long thought that a transport of over one thousand prisoners, a quota for "1st category arrests" (executions), died from drowning after the barges on which they were travelling were deliberately sunk in the White Sea. It is now known that they were shot on the mainland in late October and early November 1937; subsequent quotas for execution came too late in the year to sail across the White Sea and were shot on the islands, near Sekirnaya Hill.
All but five of the 1,116 prisoners sent from Solovki across the White Sea on 27 October 1937 were executed by NKVD Captain and senior executioner
Mikhail Matveyev at
Sandarmokh
Sandarmokh (russian: Сандармох; krl, Sandarmoh) is a forest massif from Medvezhyegorsk in the Republic of Karelia where possibly thousands of victims of Stalin's Great Terror were executed. More than 58 nationalities were shot and bur ...
between that date and 10 November 1937, when he reported his task complete.
Among those killed were 289 members of the Ukrainian intelligentsia, the
Executed Renaissance
The Executed Renaissance (or "Red Renaissance", uk, Розстріляне відродження, Червоний ренесанс, translit=Rozstriliane vidrodzhennia, Chervonyi renesans) is a term used to describe the generatio ...
.
A further transport was prepared to sail to the mainland for execution, but it was too late in the year to cross the frozen sea. Instead, between 200 and 300 prisoners were shot on Solovki itself, near the Sekirnaya Hill. One of the many victims was Yelizaveta Katz, an engineer, who was 8 months pregnant. She was due to be shot with the others on 17 February 1938, but was allowed to give birth, then shot three months later on 16 May, aged 28.
In 1939, the prison was closed. It was situated too close to the border with
Finland
Finland ( fi, Suomi ; sv, Finland ), officially the Republic of Finland (; ), is a Nordic country in Northern Europe. It shares land borders with Sweden to the northwest, Norway to the north, and Russia to the east, with the Gulf of B ...
, and the
Second World War
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
was imminent. The buildings were transformed into a naval base and a cadet corps was deployed there. (One of its students was the future author
Valentin Pikul
Valentin Savvich Pikul (russian: Валенти́н Са́ввич Пи́куль) (July 13, 1928 – July 16, 1990) was a popular and prolific Soviet historical novelist of Ukrainian-Russian heritage. He lived and worked in Riga.
Pikul's novels w ...
.)
World Heritage and a disputed legacy
In 1989, a permanent exhibition, "The Solovki special camp", was added to the museum on the islands, the first anywhere in the USSR to be devoted to the Gulag. In June of that year, the first Days of Remembrance for Victims of Political Repression were held on the islands; in subsequent years this event would take place in August.
The Orthodox Church reestablished the monastery in 1992, and that year the ensemble was added to
UNESCO
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations (UN) aimed at promoting world peace and security through international cooperation in education, arts, sciences and culture. It ...
's
World Heritage List
A World Heritage Site is a landmark or area with legal protection by an international convention administered by the UNESCO, United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). World Heritage Sites are designated by UNES ...
.
In 2015, human rights activists expressed disquiet that the authorities were "gradually removing all traces of the labor camp". In January 2016 the Gulag section in the Solovki Museum was closed by its new director, Vladimir Shutov who, as Archimandrite Porfiry, was head of the monastery.
In August 2017, the local authorities asked police to investigate the 29th annual Days of Remembrance as an "unauthorised" gathering. Early in 2018, a court in the Arkhangelsk Region heard an unsuccessful plea by Archimandrite Porfiry to annul a contract concluded in 2011 with the head of the now disbanded Gulag section of the museum and evict its former head, Olga Bochkaryova, and her daughter from their two-room apartment.
The author of several books about Solovki, Yury Brodsky, was accused by an Orthodox website of displaying "religious hatred" in his latest publication.
Notable prisoners
![Loubianka square memorial](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f7/Loubianka_square_memorial.jpg)
Members of the
intelligentsia
The intelligentsia is a status class composed of the university-educated people of a society who engage in the complex mental labours by which they critique, shape, and lead in the politics, policies, and culture of their society; as such, the in ...
, representing both Tsarist Russia and the post-revolutionary USSR, were prominent among the prisoners on Solovki.
The 1920s
In the 1920s many of those sent to Solovki were released, but often arrested and imprisoned (or exiled) a second time.
*
Frantsishak Alyakhnovich, Belarusian writer, a citizen of interwar Poland, who wrote the first book-length witness-account about
Gulag
The Gulag, an acronym for , , "chief administration of the camps". The original name given to the system of camps controlled by the GPU was the Main Administration of Corrective Labor Camps (, )., name=, group= was the government agency in ...
, titled, ''
In the Claws of the GPU''; imprisoned 1927-1933, in 1933 exchanged with Poland for
Branislaw Tarashkyevich
Branislaw Adamavich Tarashkyevich, russian: Бронисла́в Ада́мович Тарашке́вич, lt, Bronislavas Taraškevičius, pl, Bronisław Adamowicz Taraszkiewicz (20 January 1892 – 29 November 1938) was a Belarusian public fi ...
.
*
Vladimir Artemyev, inventor: imprisoned 1923-1925
*
Osip Braz
Osip Emmanuilovich Braz (russian: Осип Эммануилович Браз; 16 January 1873 in Odessa – 6 November 1936 near Paris) was a Russian-Jewish realist painter.
Biography
He began his art education in Odessa, now Ukraine, and conti ...
, Russian-Jewish realist painter: imprisoned 1924-1926
*
Boris Chiriaev writer, author of ''La veilleuse de Solovki - 1889 - 1959'' imprisoned in 1923
*
Leonid Feodorov
Leonid Ivanovich Feodorov (russian: Леонид Иванович Фёдоров; 4 November 1879 – 7 March 1935) was a Studite hieromonk from the Russian Greek Catholic Church, the first Exarch of the Russian Catholic Apostolic Exarchate of R ...
,
Bishop
A bishop is an ordained clergy member who is entrusted with a position of authority and oversight in a religious institution.
In Christianity, bishops are normally responsible for the governance of dioceses. The role or office of bishop is ca ...
and
Exarch
An exarch (;
from Ancient Greek ἔξαρχος ''exarchos'', meaning “leader”) was the holder of any of various historical offices, some of them being political or military and others being ecclesiastical.
In the late Roman Empire and ea ...
of the
Russian Greek Catholic Church
, native_name_lang = ru
, image = Moscow,_Catholic_Church_in_Presnya.jpg
, imagewidth = 200px
, alt =
, caption = Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception
, abbreviation =
, ty ...
: imprisoned 1923-1929
*
Konstantine Gamsakhurdia
Konstantine Gamsakhurdia ( ka, კონსტანტინე გამსახურდია) (May 3, 1893 – July 17, 1975) was a Georgian writer and public figure. Educated and first published in Germany, he married Western European inf ...
, Georgian writer: imprisoned mid-1920s
* G.J.Gordon, historian
*
Yuri Bezsonov Georgy Dmitrievich Bezsonov, variant: Yury Dmitrievich Bezsonov ()) was a Russian Imperial Army cavalry officer, known for his memoir about the Soviet Solovki prison camp
The Solovki special camp (later the Solovki special prison), was set up in ...
, a cavalry commander in the ''Dikaya Divisia'', one of the very few people, who succeeded in escaping the camp
* , poet: sent to Solovki (?) in 1929
*
Jamo bey Hajinski
Jamo bey Hajinski Suleyman oghlu ( az, Camo bəy Hacınski Süleyman oğlu; 1888 – 1942) was an Azerbaijani publicist, public figure and politician. He served in the first, fourth and fifth cabinets of Azerbaijan Democratic Republic as its S ...
,
State Controller and
Minister of Transportation, Postal Service and Telegraph of
Azerbaijan Democratic Republic
The Azerbaijan Democratic Republic), or simply as Azerbaijan in Paris Peace Conference, 1919–1920,''Bulletin d'Information de l'Azerbaidjan'', No. I, September 1, 1919, pp. 6–7''125 H.C.Debs.'', 58., February 24, 1920, p. 1467. Caucasian Az ...
: imprisoned 1925-1928
* Archimandrite , Professor of the Moscow Theological Academy: imprisoned 1924-1929
* , Professor of the Moscow Theological Academy: imprisoned 1925-1927
* , historian and ethnographer: imprisoned 1925–1928, shot at Sandarmokh on 8 January 1938, aged 61
The First Five-Year Plan, 1928–1932
Naftaly Frenkel
Naftaly Aronovich Frenkel (russian: Нафталий Аронович Френкель; 1883 in Haifa – 1960 in Moscow) was a Soviet security officer and member of the Soviet secret police. Frenkel is best known for his role in the organisatio ...
was a prisoner on Solovki who became a leading cadre in the security services during the First
Five-Year Plan.
Arrested by the OGPU in 1923, he was sentenced to ten years imprisonment and sent to Solovki. There his sentence was reduced and in 1927, he was released and appointed head of production at SLON before being sent as representative of the camp to Moscow in 1929. Soon he was in charge of production throughout the Gulag and oversaw work on the White Sea Canal. His activities in the Gulag paralleled the forced industrialisation and
collectivisation of agriculture throughout the Soviet Union.
The mass shooting on Solovki in 1929 described by
Dmitry Sergeyevich Likhachov (it forms a key episode in
Marina Goldovskaya
Marina Yevseyevna Goldovskaya (russian: Марина Евсеевна Голдо́вская; July 15, 1941 – March 20, 2022) was a Russian-American documentary film maker known for her candid portrayal of people.
Family
Her father worked with ...
's 1987 film, ''Solovki Power'') was a sign of the harshening regime.
*
Nikolai Antsiferov
Nikolai Pavlovich Antsiferov (russian: Николай Павлович Анциферов; – September 2, 1958) was a Soviet historian and scholar of culture and local lore.
Biography
Antsiferov was born in the estate of Count Potocki i ...
, historian: imprisoned 1929-1933
* Academician
Dmitry Likhachov, philologist: imprisoned 1928–1931, then worked on White Sea Canal until 1932
*
Vladimir V. Tchernavin,
ichthyologist
Ichthyology is the branch of zoology devoted to the study of fish, including bony fish ( Osteichthyes), cartilaginous fish (Chondrichthyes), and jawless fish (Agnatha). According to FishBase, 33,400 species of fish had been described as of Octobe ...
: imprisoned 1931, then transferred to Kem. From Kem he escaped to the West and wrote about his experiences in his book, ''I Speak for the Silent Prisoners of the Soviets.''
*
Vladimir N. Beneshevich, historian, paleographer: imprisoned 1928-1933
* , writer: imprisoned 1928–1929, 1931-1936
*
Mirjaqip Dulatuli, Kazakh writer: imprisoned 1928-1935 (died on Solovki)
*
Klym Polishchuk
Klym Lavrynovych Polishchuk ( uk, Клим Лаврентійович Поліщук, 25 November 1891, Krasnopil, Zhytomyr region, Ukraine – 3 November 1937, Sandarmokh, Russia) was a Ukrainian journalist, poet and writer.
Biography
Klym Po ...
, Ukrainian journalist, poet and writer sentenced for 10 years in 1929, executed in 1937
*
Vera Baltz, Russian soil scientist, sentenced for 5 years in 1930, released early in 1933 on account of age
*
Evgenia Iaroslavskaia-Markon, Russian journalist and anarchist, sentenced for 3 years in 1930, executed in 1931.
The mid- to late 1930s
Many of those on Solovki later in the 1930s fell victim to
Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (born Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili; – 5 March 1953) was a Georgian revolutionary and Soviet political leader who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until his death in 1953. He held power as General Secretar ...
's
Great Purge
The Great Purge or the Great Terror (russian: Большой террор), also known as the Year of '37 (russian: 37-й год, translit=Tridtsat sedmoi god, label=none) and the Yezhovshchina ('period of Nikolay Yezhov, Yezhov'), was General ...
and were shot, either in autumn 1937 at
Sandarmokh
Sandarmokh (russian: Сандармох; krl, Sandarmoh) is a forest massif from Medvezhyegorsk in the Republic of Karelia where possibly thousands of victims of Stalin's Great Terror were executed. More than 58 nationalities were shot and bur ...
or on Solovki in February 1938.
* , lawyer and descendant of
Decembrist
The Decembrist Revolt ( ru , Восстание декабристов, translit = Vosstaniye dekabristov , translation = Uprising of the Decembrists) took place in Russia on , during the interregnum following the sudden death of Emperor Al ...
Pavel Sergeyevich Bobrishchev-Pushkin: imprisoned 1934–1937, shot at Sandarmokh on 27 October 1937, aged 61
*
Pavel Florensky
Pavel Alexandrovich Florensky (also P. A. Florenskiĭ, Florenskii, Florenskij; russian: Па́вел Алекса́ндрович Флоре́нский; hy, Պավել Ֆլորենսկի, Pavel Florenski; – December 8, 1937) was a Russian Or ...
, priest, scientist, encyclopaedist: imprisoned 1934–1937, shot at unknown location
*
Nariman bey Narimanbeyov
Nariman bey Hashim oglu Narimanbeyov ( az, Nəriman bəy Həşim bəy oğlu Nərimanbəyli; 1889–1937), also known as Nariman bey Narimanbeyli ( az, Nəriman bəy Nərimanbəyli), was an Azerbaijani lawyer and statesman who served as State Con ...
, State Controller of Azerbaijan Democratic Republic (1918-1920): died on Solovki in 1937, aged 48 (shot?)
*
Karlo Štajner
Karlo Štajner (15 January 1902 – 1 March 1992) was an Austrian-Yugoslav communist activist and a prominent Gulag survivor. Štajner was born in Vienna, where he joined the Communist Youth of Austria, but emigrated to the Kingdom of Serbs, C ...
, a Yugoslavian communist: imprisoned 1937-1939
* , Ukrainian poet: imprisoned 1937, shot at Sandarmokh on 3 November 1937, aged 33
*
Hamid bey Shahtakhtinski,
Minister of Education and Religious Affairs of Azerbaijan Democratic Republic (1918-1920): imprisoned 1941-1944 when he died.
The prison on Solovki in art and literature
Émigré and samizdat literature, 1926-1974
* The first memoir about Solovki was by S.A. Malsagoff, a North Caucasian prisoner, who escaped after a year on the islands.
*
*
Tchernavin was a prisoner in the camp in the early 1930s. He described his experiences there in his book, published after his escape abroad.
* Ivan Ponyrov, the poet also known as "Ivan the Homeless", suggests to
Woland
Woland (russian: Воланд) is a fictional character in the novel ''The Master and Margarita'' by the Russian (Soviet) author Mikhail Bulgakov, written between 1928 and 1940. Woland is the mysterious foreigner and professor whose visit to Mosco ...
(a German name for Satan) that
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant (, , ; 22 April 1724 – 12 February 1804) was a German philosopher and one of the central Enlightenment thinkers. Born in Königsberg, Kant's comprehensive and systematic works in epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, and ...
should be sent to Solovki as punishment for his attempts to prove the existence of God. Woland replies
Thats just the place for him! I told him so that day at breakfast... oweverIt is impossible to send him to Solovki for the simple reason that he has resided for the past hundred-odd years in places considerably more remote than Solovki, and, I assure you, it is quite impossible to get him out of there.
* The fictional town of Solovets in the Strugatsky brothers' popular ''
Monday Begins on Saturday
''Monday Begins on Saturday'' (russian: Понедельник начинается в субботу) is a 1965 science fantasy novel by Soviet writers Boris and Arkady Strugatsky, with illustrations by Yevgeniy Migunov. Set in a fictional to ...
'' (1965) is an allusion to the
Solovetsky Monastery
The Solovetsky Monastery ( rus, Солове́цкий монасты́рь, p=səlɐˈvʲɛtskʲɪj mənɐˈstɨrʲ) is a fortified monastery located on the Solovetsky Islands in the White Sea in northern Russia. It was one of the largest Chris ...
.
*
Solzhenitsyn
Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn. (11 December 1918 – 3 August 2008) was a Russian novelist. One of the most famous Soviet dissidents, Solzhenitsyn was an outspoken critic of communism and helped to raise global awareness of political repress ...
spends an entire chapter of Volume 2 discussing the development of Solovki and conditions there during the early years of the Soviet regime.
*
Boris Chiriaev, author of ''La veilleuse de Solovki'' described the birth of the first gulag in 1923, the date when he was imprisoned.
He described the daily routine and the socio-cultural multitude of the prisoners.
Perestroika and Glasnost, 1985-1991
* Marina Goldovskaya's 1988 documentary film ''The Solovki Regime'' («Власть Соловецкая») tells the story of the first, permanent camp in Soviet Russia, from its founding in 1923 to the closure of the prison in 1939. It includes interviews with former prisoners, among them mediaevalist
Dmitry Likhachyov, writer Oleg Volkov and long-term Gulag inmate Olga Adamova-Sliozberg (one of the four named sources in Solzhenitsyn's ''Gulag Archipelago'', the rest were anonymous until 1994).
* Abridged version of the 1989 Soviet original («Доднесь тяготеет. т. 1. Записки Вашей современницы»). Includes two key memoirs describing the early and final stages of the camp's existence (see Memoirs, below).
* Yugoslav communist
Karlo Štajner
Karlo Štajner (15 January 1902 – 1 March 1992) was an Austrian-Yugoslav communist activist and a prominent Gulag survivor. Štajner was born in Vienna, where he joined the Communist Youth of Austria, but emigrated to the Kingdom of Serbs, C ...
served a part of his sentence on Solovki. He recounts his experiences there in ''7,000 days in Siberia'' (English edn. 1989).
Footnotes
Further reading (in order of publication)
Memoirs
*
* Vladimir V. Tchernavin (1935)
''I Speak for the Silent: Prisoners of the Soviets.''Boston: Hale, Cushman, and Flint.
* Excerpt from memoir written in 1970s by a Left Social-Revolutionary (tr. John Crowfoot)
* Excerpt from memoir written in 1940s and 1950s by a repentant non-Party communist (tr. Sally Laird)
* Olga Adamova Sliozberg (2011), ''My Journey: How one woman survived Stalin's Gulag'', Northwestern University Press: Evanston, Ill. (The full unabridged memoir, translated by Katharine Gratwick Baker.)
Novels
*
Studies
*
* Michael Jakobson (1993), ''Origins of the GULAG: The Soviet Prison Camp System, 1917–1934.'' Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky.
* Galina Mikhaĭlovna Ivanova, Carol Apollonio Flath, and Donald J. Raleigh (2000), ''Labor Camp Socialism: The Gulag in the Soviet Totalitarian System.'' New York: M.E. Sharpe.
*
* Roy P. Robson (2004), ''Solovki: The Story of Russia Told Through its Most Remarkable Islands.'' Cambridge, MA: Yale University Press.
* Shubin, Daniel H.
Monastery Prisons',
External links
*
A. Razumov, "The Solovki transports, 1937-1938", ''Returning the Names'' website
Blinken Open Society Archives
The Dmitriev Affair website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Solovki Prison Camp
Camps of the Gulag
Russian Civil War
Buildings and structures in Arkhangelsk Oblast
Prisons in the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...
1923 establishments in the Soviet Union
Massacres in the Soviet Union
Political repression in the Soviet Union
NKVD
Politicides
Solovetsky Islands
Prison islands